Venice is sinking!

Some of you have seen on the news the pictures of people swimming in San Marco square in Venice. It’s true…we got bit flooded over here. Vicenza even got it pretty good on Sunday after lot’s of rain, the river runs through downtown and therefore often times overflows during rainy November. It was so bad on Sunday that they shut down most areas of downtown.

The flooding in Venice is fascinating to me. Last weekend they had record flooding so we decided to go see what Venice was like underwater. When we went though, it was completely dry! I had to do a little more research to better understand the “flooding” of Venice. It’s not just a flood, it actually has to do with the high tide, rain and drilling offshore. Basically, as I understand it, recent years of offshore drilling have increased the frequency of the “aqua alta” (high water). When we get a good amount of rain and the high tide comes in, the low parts of Venice get a bit flooded. But it goes back out with the tide. So once I understood this better, I realized that you can’t just go see the flood in Venice, you have to be there at high tide.

So on Monday, we caught it. It wasn’t as high as the record breaking one the day before, but it was fun regardless. Jonah was in heaven splashing through one big puddle in the main square. It was over his rain boots, so we had to ring him out afterwards. Our friend Giovanna tagged along, and Nick was there, just behind the camera.